Boss Neil McNab is under strict orders to sign a striker before Saturday's vital match against fellow strugglers Swansea. 

The move recalls memories of Roy Essandoh answering a Wycombe Wanderers SOS on the club's website for a striker and scoring the winner to dump Leicester City of the FA Cup in 2001.

The announcement on the website read: "Exeter City Football Club are urgently looking for a quality striker.

"If you have the ability to fill this role then please contact the club on 01392 411243.

"This is a serious proposal as the club are looking to fill this position quickly."

For the past couple of weeks the club have highlighted the fact that they wanted to draft in at least one high-quality striker in time for this weekend's six-pointer against Swansea.

 
The club have been linked with, among others, Portsmouth's Lee Bradbury and prolific Nationwide duo Junior McDougald and Junior Agogo. McNab watched potential transfer target Scott Partridge plunder two goals for Rushden & Diamonds in a 7-0 reserve team rout of Hartlepool yesterday.

The City boss told that the club was "not close" to getting a striker in before the weekend. Alan Hutchinson, a spokesman for Wycombe, was more optimistic about a striker coming forward after the success the Second Division club had.

He came up with the idea to advertise on Wycombe's website when boss Lawrie Sanchez was desperate for an emergency marksman.

"It worked for us so there is no reason it will not work for Exeter," he said.

"The whole thing took about 15 minutes for us. An agent called Matt Stein rang and said he had a couple of strikers available.

"One of them was Roy Essandoh who we had seen a few weeks before play against our reserves for Luton so we already knew about him.

"We couldn't have asked for it to work any better, and it doesn't do any harm."

City co-chairman John Russell defended the move, insisting the internet was a useful tool for spreading news of the club's search for a goalscorer.

"It's an idea other clubs have adopted so we thought we would give it a go and see what we came up with".